Title
Katholische Bibel. Das ist die ganze Heilige Schrift alten und neuen Testaments [Catholic Bible. The Scriptures, Old and New Testaments].
Publisher
Nürnberg: Johann Joseph Fleischmann,
Date
1763.
Description
On a freezing night in Cambridge, Massachusetts in December 1958, at around 2:00 a.m., I was walking back to my room in Adams House after a feast of delicious scrambled eggs with a buttery, well-toasted English muffin at the Hayes-Bickford, on Massachusetts Avenue. (I had pulled an all-nighter in preparation for a final exam.) I passed an old bookstore and a big old book beckoned to me from the window display. In the darkness, I could only tell that it was a German bible. And it was the first time I felt: I must have this.
Following winter break, I went back to the bookstore to see if the object of my desire had waited for me. It had. I loved leafing through it and admiring the beautiful engravings. I also loved the old-book smell, the old binding and the metal clasps. I had to own it but it was marked at forty-five dollars (or twenty-five steak dinners at the Hasty Pudding Club). I figured a way to come up with the funds and acquired my first collector’s item.
This Roman Catholic Bible, with 212 engravings, has stayed with me for nearly the next sixty years, whether in New York City during graduate school; in Montreal, where I held my first jobs; Milan, where I had grown up; or London and Tel Aviv. For the last thirty years it has occupied a place of honor in my New York City library.
It is worth noting that I am not Catholic nor do I read German. But such is bibliophily.
Following winter break, I went back to the bookstore to see if the object of my desire had waited for me. It had. I loved leafing through it and admiring the beautiful engravings. I also loved the old-book smell, the old binding and the metal clasps. I had to own it but it was marked at forty-five dollars (or twenty-five steak dinners at the Hasty Pudding Club). I figured a way to come up with the funds and acquired my first collector’s item.
This Roman Catholic Bible, with 212 engravings, has stayed with me for nearly the next sixty years, whether in New York City during graduate school; in Montreal, where I held my first jobs; Milan, where I had grown up; or London and Tel Aviv. For the last thirty years it has occupied a place of honor in my New York City library.
It is worth noting that I am not Catholic nor do I read German. But such is bibliophily.
Source
Alexander Goren